2 Key Directors Resign at Troubled Saatchi & Saatchi

Two key directors of the troubled advertising and consulting giant Saatchi & Saatchi Co. PLC resigned Friday, the company said.

Roy Warman and Terry Bannister served as joint chief operating officers of Saatchi’s communications division with responsibility for worldwide advertising operations.

Saatchi’s deputy chairman Jeremy Sinclair was named to replace the men.

The departures of Warman, 41, and Bannister, 44, are the first major executive departures since January when Robert Louis-Dreyfus was brought in as chief executive.

Warman was a founding member of Saatchi’s executive team, joining the firm at its beginning in 1970. Terry Bannister had been with the London-based company for 17 years.

Louis-Dreyfus issued a brief statement, in which he said, “I am sorry to see them go, but following the decision to redeploy as much of the central talent as possible within the operations, no role could be found for Roy and Terry which satisfied them.”

The company has been battered by an expensive diversification into consulting during the mid-1980s, weak financial controls and a period of slow growth in the advertising industry.

Louis-Dreyfus, the Harvard MBA who turned around IMS International, the New York-based pharmaceutical market research firm, has introduced cost-cutting measures and is trying to sell Saatchi’s consulting businesses.

A Saatchi spokesman said Friday’s departures weren’t totally unexpected.

“It’s (the result) of a corporate decision by the chief executive. That’s the chief executive’s job,” said the spokesman, who was not named in keeping with British custom.

The spokesman added that Warman and Bannister have four-year contracts and may leave $1.64 million (1 million pounds), each.

Sinclair, 43, another founding member of the firm, has been chairman of Saatchi’s international advertising operations since 1986, and the group’s deputy chairman since 1987.